Small Account Challenge Day 18: +$53 Winning Helps Me Not Feel Like A Loser

Today was a good trading day, I had some time to trade during the day and I believe that made all the difference. I made three day trades today and besides buying a little too early on the first one and breaking even, they were all successful trades.

I’m actually at a Worden TC2000 training seminar for the weekend so it’s rather fun to be able to learn more about trading, while trading. More recap of the seminar tomorrow. For now, the trades!

The first trade was $AUTO. It dropped 40% overnight because, well, frankly it’s a company in the crapper. They missed earnings, fired their CEO and CFO, and are in desperate need of further restructuring. So when the news hit last night the stock price sank. But as my theory goes it hits a bottom right after open and then rebounds enough to capture some profit. This one was no exception, but I bought in way too early. The volume of this stock is really low so I caught a false signal that it was rebounding. Remember: one candle is a move, two or three candles confirm the move. Watch the one minute chart, but look to the five-minute chart for confirmation. But I didn’t wait on it and jumped in at $4.22 about two minutes in. Total fake out, the stock dropped to the real bottom around $4.05 before rebounding to about $4.25. That would have been a 4-5% move for me had I not been impatient. I’ll post both the one and five minute charts below and it will be obvious to you as well once you see it.

The next trade was $DXR, and this one was a lot of fun. It started to run yesterday and got halted, then opened up this morning like a bat out of hell. Reminds me of $ZSAN from yesterday in the way that it popped, consolidated, popped, consolidated just oh so beautifully. That’s the only reason I played it, and you can see my drawings on the chart below to see how I traded it. I actually traded it a little scared so I waited until after the second pop. It fell the support, went back up and tested resistance, fell back down and was consolidating just like before. I wasn’t going to risk too much so I caught a little movement in between support and resistance. Then, I was drawing a triangle expecting another upward movement but the stock was just moving so slow. I got up to pee, and when I came back I missed a textbook 8% move breaking over the top. It consolidated again, I drew my triangle and it broke downward so I knew the stock was done. It just hobbled around before breaking all the way back down. Fun play, but I was hoping for as much action as $ZSAN had yesterday.

Last trade was $STLY, another bottom bounce stock I had my eye on. The volume on this one was super low and came in spurts until the end of the day. I didn’t watch it in the morning and missed an 11% move but based on its previous drops I expect it to move up again some in the next couple days, so I’ll watch it next week. But at the end of the day It was just bouncing up and down between 0.57 and 0.60, so I decided to scalp a few short movements. I only made one trade in Ustocktrade, but what was fun was paper trading in TC2000 with some of the new tactics I learned in this class. Version 18 of the software has hot keys now, and I was buying at .58, selling at .60, then buying again and selling again just catching movements. With only $1000 worth of paper money, I made $171 in about an hour of just safe up and down plays. The execution of trades in TC2000 is awesome, especially placing and modifying orders directly from the chart. The trade execution in Ustocktrade isn’t nearly as fast or easy, but the trade fees are way less and there’s no PDT rule so it’s worth dealing with it… for now. When I get enough of a stash to not be hindered by the PDT rules I’ll be trading from the chart for real instead of with a paper trading account.

Oh, I did make one huge mistake…. $YTEN went below $1.57, it always pops when it gets below this price. I saw it and said to myself, I should buy that. Got distracted and didn’t, and guess what? It popped 22% from where I saw it… smh… oh well, I have an alert set in TC2000 now so I won’t miss it.

Small account balance now sits at $1,111.55, reclaiming 5% after trade fees and helping me to not feel like such a loser after a pretty red week.